Fight or Flight
by Periphery
Summary: Post-ep for Cold. "'Believe it or not,' she says, annoyed, 'being mad at you is not high on my list right now.'" Elliot is an idiot on several levels. Rated for language.


_Disclaimer: Dick Wolf owns all. Except Freddy, but I don't particularly want him._

_A/N: This has been bouncing around in my head for a while. I'm not sure how well it worked, especially since I kind of combined two story ideas at the last minute . . . picks up right where the finale left off._

* * *

Since they are not needed or even wanted at the crime scene, they mill around in confusion. Olivia walks a ways with Casey, who is more or less constantly on the verge of tears. Elliot paces. John and Fin do the same, though giving him a wide berth. He ignores this, listening instead to the rise and fall of their voices. They sound deceptively like normalcy.

After ten minutes of this the women come back into view, Olivia's arm around Casey's shoulders. Elliot stands still and watches his partner flag down a cab and embrace Casey tightly. _I'll tell them, _he hears her murmur, reassuring. _I'll tell them. I'll come over tomorrow. You'll be okay. You'll see._

When the cab pulls away Olivia turns to them, haunted. "We lost another one," she says simply, and her eyes linger on Fin.

In the same motion the men approach her, so that no outsider can see the fissure down the core of the cluster that is the four of them. "You don' mean Casey," Fin says cautiously.

"I do. She's going to be suspended. A year at least."

Elliot finds himself rooted, dumb, to the ground. John tilts his head as though this is difficult to understand. "What for?"

"Withholding evidence."

"That lab report?" Fin asks, and she nods.

"So we finally rubbed off on her," John says, trying to look proud.

Olivia grimaces. "Shut up. You're not helping."

John snorts and stalks away, Fin following, leaving Benson and Stabler to stare at each other, helpless.

"We should, uh, get back to the house," he says tentatively.

"Yeah." Olivia plucks the keys from his coat pocket. "You're not driving."

This is probably a good idea, since he seems to be seeing events in slow motion, as though he's only a spectator, unable to affect them. Wishful thinking. Elliot follows his partner to the car and tips his head back against the passenger seat.

She drives in a hurt kind of silence; it takes him five blocks to find the courage to break it. "Are you mad at me too?"

"Believe it or not," she says, annoyed, "being mad at you is not high on my list right now." They're stopped at a red light and she flexes her hands on the wheel, lost. When the light changes she doesn't react. Honks assault them.

"Drive," he reminds her.

"Right." She does. "You _are _a rat bastard sometimes, Elliot. I got used to that years ago. I was just thinking…"

After a moment he prompts, "Yeah?"

"Just…Lake, and Fin, and Casey. Just like that."

In this moment Elliot fully believes the label he's been saddled with. Rat bastard. So wrapped up in his own guilt and alienation that he forgot his partner. The unit's a kind of family for all of them, but to Olivia it's literal. And he knew that.

"One damn case," she mutters.

"Liv," he starts, conscious of the inadequacy of his words.

"Be quiet."

He obeys, watching her breathe deeply, signal, turn. He should be driving. Right now she needs to be taken care of more than he does. He doesn't know how to tell her this.

"You realize Munch hates us too," she says at length, eyes trained on the road.

"Me," he corrects. "Munch hates me."

She throws him a half-amused smile. "I think by now he's figured out that we're basically a package deal."

He opens his mouth to protest, then shuts it because she's done stupid things too and he's stuck by her. Giving support is instinctive; receiving is not. "He'll get over it," he says instead. "He knows you had nothing to do with it."

"I hope so," she sighs.

Elliot shifts uncomfortably. "Liv, I – "

"Shut up, Elliot. I don't need to hear guilt from you. That's just another way of feeling sorry for yourself."

He's tempted to point out how often _she_ is crippled by guilt, but probably she doesn't need to hear that either. "What do you need from me, then?" he asks quietly.

Olivia glances over at him, surprised, then quickly turns her face back to the road. "I …"

"Sorry."

"What did we just say about apologies."

"Nothing."

"Just shut up, El."

She didn't answer the question, but of course it was a very strange question.

_Fin's a straight shooter, Elliot. All you had to do was ask him._

_I think you need to make this right._

He understands this now better than he did at the time. Olivia went so far as to ask him to hold her family together, and he failed her utterly. Elliot has to look away from his partner and her stoicism. Lake and Fin and Casey and he's an idiot. Christ.

Please, God, hasn't she been through enough this year?

They're at the precinct before he works up his nerve again. Olivia pulls into a parking spot with great precision, shuts off the ignition and leans her head on the steering wheel. Without thinking he reaches over to rub her back. "Liv, I'm sorry."

She's letting her guard down. He can tell because she doesn't pull away from his hand, just turns her head slightly to see him, still leaning on the wheel. The vulnerability is in her eyes. He hates that it's there, but is somehow selfishly relieved that she lets him see it.

"Just," she whispers, "just…don't you leave me too."

Elliot closes his eyes, overwhelmed by the awesome weight of this responsibility, and wraps his arm around her shoulders. "Long as you don't leave me again."

They both smile then, knowing now with the passage of time that he can't blame her for leaving any more than she can blame him for what he said that day. Olivia sits up and retrieves the keys. "Well then. Let's go face the music?"

* * *

Three days later the team moves in suspended animation, Fin's pending transfer request hanging over their heads. The guy they've got sitting in interrogation doesn't help. He recently lost his wife to suicide, they like him for the abuse of his six-year-old daughter, and he seems to have an unhealthy attraction to Olivia.

When she's called out of the room she doesn't get the teasing she normally does. Elliot offers a half-hearted smile. Munch and Fin aren't even looking at her. Olivia doesn't bother to say what's going through her head: _why do I only get it from jerks?_ Instead she asks, "Can I talk to Samantha again? I was getting somewhere with her."

"Go." Cragen waves her on. "She's been asking for you. These bozos can work on Freddy here."

Samantha Radmar clings to her when they send her home with her father, but they don't have a choice. Olivia hates these cases the most. "That girl," she says to Elliot, "is just going home to more abuse."

"We'll keep digging," he says, but the hopelessness is in his voice.

Olivia drops her head into her hands. "I can't do this," she mutters.

Elliot misunderstands, although this could be intentional. "Sure you can," he says, clapping her on the back before he moves away.

* * *

At 11:03 pm, old Marguerite Makins falls and finds herself unable to get up. She snags the phone cord and dials her neighbor across the hall. After fifteen rings she tries downstairs.

At 12:32 the Stablers are rudely awoken.

* * *

"What was that?" Kathy says sleepily.

"The kind of call you never want to get," her husband mutters, kissing her forehead. "The hospital. Olivia. I gotta go."

* * *

Maybe it's the ungodly hour of the night, or maybe it's that he's being told his partner attempted suicide, but somehow nothing the doctor says is making sense. Elliot shakes his head, interrupting her. "You've made a mistake."

"The pill bottle was found next to her," the woman says gently.

"No, see, that's a mistake. You're talking about a cop. She owns a gun. She's seen eighteen ways to strangle yourself. She knows to cut down the wrist, not across. If Olivia wanted to kill herself, she wouldn't overdose."

"Maybe she didn't want to be a cop anymore," the doctor suggests. "I think this was meant for you." She presses a scrap of paper into his hand.

All Olivia wrote was _El, I'm sorry, _but this is enough to drive him to his knees.

* * *

He's been sitting with his sleeping partner for half an hour before it occurs to him to call the captain. It's the middle of the night, but he probably stands less chance now of being caught with a cell phone in the hospital room.

"This better be good, Detective."

"It's Liv," Elliot manages, but he's looking at her face as he says it and his throat closes up.

"First things first," Cragen says, now wide awake and patient. "Is she gonna be all right?"

"Yeah," he says. This part at least makes sense. "Neighbor is very observant. She was lucky." _But did she want to be?_

"What happened?"

"She, uh – they say she…" He can't put the words _Olivia _and_ suicide_ in the same sentence. "She, uh, overdosed. They say it was intentional."

Funny the things that come out of your mouth when you're moving on autopilot.

"What the hell do they know?" Cragen says, and demands the name of the doctor. Elliot gives it to him and hangs up, drained.

He studies Olivia's still face, searching for the secret he missed. Was something so incredibly wrong that she couldn't even tell him? Or was it everything? He thinks of Sealview and Lincoln Haver and Merrit Rook and Lauren Cooper and now her family falling apart, and still it does not make sense, because this is Olivia and she knows she can come to him. Elliot fingers her note. _El, I'm sorry._ Was she trying to tell him something, earlier? Did he brush her off?

Soon he runs out of English swear words and wishes harder that she'd wake up, just because she's the one who's multilingual and he knows she knows some good ones.

Munch and Fin turn up in the hallway at three-thirty. Elliot steps out and pretends to listen to what John is saying, but he sees Olivia after Sealview, he sees Olivia leaning against the steering wheel, the sorrow in her eyes, Lake and Fin and Casey, just like that; and the fury won't let anything else in. John's looking at him expectantly.

Very calmly Elliot punches Fin in the face and returns to his partner's side.

* * *

She wakes up confused. Olivia's gaze travels from the sterile ceiling over walls that are not her own and finally lands on Elliot.

He's watching her, trying to smile. First she notices that he's blinking an awful lot, then that the tears are in his eyes anyway.

Shit. She sits up so fast that her head pounds, but she ignores this. "Elliot? What's wrong?"

"Lie down," he says roughly.

The head of the bed's tilted up anyway, so she obeys without arguing. "What happened?" she asks, looking around the hospital room. She hates the hospital, especially not knowing why she's there.

When Elliot doesn't answer she looks to him again. "C'mon, El, you look like crap. Give me something here."

He seems almost as bewildered as she feels. "What's the last thing you remember?" he asks cautiously.

"Going to bed. You know, at home. Now, I was exceptionally tired but somehow I still expected to wake up at home." She glances down at herself, but the horrid gown and IV don't offer any answers. "What happened?"

Elliot swallows once, twice, but still his voice cracks. "You don't remember taking the pills?"

"Pills?" she says blankly, and then it hits her. "You think I tried to _kill_ myself?"

He goes very still. "Didn't you?"

"Fuck you," she says in answer, furious.

"Liv," he says grabbing her hand, "maybe it was an accident – "

"An accidental overdose of what? Chocolate? Fuck, Elliot, I wasn't _taking _anything."

"Then how did an open pill bottle wind up on your nightstand?"

She gapes at him. "Well, I sure as hell don't know, but since I seem to be stuck here for reasons that still have not been satisfactorily explained to me, I think figuring that out is _your _job."

"Liv," he whispers, voice thick with relief, but he's not getting any sympathy. He's supposed to be the one to know her better than this. Olivia yanks her hand from his and turns away.

"Just go," she says. "I don't want to look at you right now."

His hand squeezes her shoulder; then she hears the shuffling of his feet as he obeys.

* * *

Elliot can't leave yet. He calls the captain again and demands that CSU be sent to Olivia's apartment, overriding Cragen's objections that they aren't going to find anything.

"She didn't," he says simply. "I just talked to her, Cap, and she didn't do it."

Apparently the doctor has won Cragen over. "Maybe she just couldn't tell you."

"We're talking about Olivia. If she says she didn't take those pills, then we're just gonna have to find out how they got in her system. Send CSU. I'll be there soon."

When he hangs up he wanders through the gift shop. Flowers are not Liv, but they sell chocolate.

She's asleep when he enters her room, or pretending to be. He doesn't care; let her be mad at him. The grin splits his face. She's alive, and she's _not _suicidal, and for the life of him he can't remember what was ever wrong with the world. He leaves the box next to her.

By the time he reaches Olivia's apartment, CSU has begun to piece together the events of last night. Judith waves him over to the living room window, shows him the signs of forced entry. "Disabled the alarm," she says. "Put the curtain down; Benson wouldn't have noticed."

"Prints?" he asks, but of course someone canny enough to get to his partner wouldn't be that stupid.

As though he's invoked her, his cell phone rings. Elliot checks the caller ID and grins. "Liv."

"Oh, be quiet." She's still mad at him. "Elliot, my fridge."

"Send everything for testing?"

"I didn't drink any of that. I finished off a milk carton. Check the recycling under the sink."

Elliot does. "Got it. I'm sending everything in your fridge too, though."

"We're talking about me. There's hardly anything _in _my fridge." She pauses, then goes on more quietly, "How'd he get in?"

"Living room window."

She hisses softly. "I didn't check."

"Who would?" he says reasonably.

"Anything else?"

_Yes, _he wants to say, _I'm so glad you're okay and I'm sorry I ever doubted you and don't do this to me again._ "Nope."

Olivia hangs up.

* * *

"What's up?"

Olivia's got a magazine propped on her knees; she doesn't look up. "You wanna tell me what happened between you and Fin last night?"

"Who said anything happened?" Elliot asks innocently.

"John. He can't lie to me; he can only avoid subjects." She flips a page. "Well?"

He takes her question as an invitation to sit and admits, "I punched him in the face."

"Why?" she demands, exasperated.

"Shit, Liv, because we still thought you'd tried suicide and I figured losing him might've had something to do with it."

Olivia presses her lips into a thin line. "You're an idiot."

Well, he's still too shell-shocked to be intelligent. Elliot changes the subject. "I talked to your neighbor. Mrs. Makins."

She nods and turns another page. "Munch told me how that went down."

"Sweet lady. Said she'd heard you come home and you always answer her calls."

"I'm used to getting phone calls in the middle of the night. Hers don't keep me up as long." Olivia glances up at him. "Don't."

"Don't what?"

"Send her flowers or candy or whatever you're thinking of. She likes to look at younger men; she'd never let go of you. I'd have to explain to her that she's too good for you."

Elliot sighs, closing his eyes. "Liv…"

She closes the magazine with a snap. "You're supposed to look beyond the obvious, Elliot. You're supposed to know me well enough to take a fucking step back and say, _this doesn't make sense._ That's _you._ No-one else."

_Don't you leave me too._

"I didn't believe it at first," he says. He's been wanting to tell her this all morning. "I didn't, Liv, I swear. There's this complete stranger telling me you tried to – to kill yourself, and I'm standing here thinking of all the reasons you wouldn't. I even gave her a few. And she gave me this."

The note is in an evidence bag now, to be sent to the lab on the slim chance of getting anything off it, but he wanted her to see it first. Olivia cocks her head, bemused. "'El, I'm sorry,'" she reads aloud, and lets it fall to her lap.

"It's your handwriting," he says unnecessarily.

"I know. I wrote it. They didn't give you what was under it?"

"Only that. But I was just at your place, Liv; there's nothing on your nightstand."

"Son of a bitch," she mutters, shuddering slightly. "It would've been the perfect crime."

"Liv?"

She looks into her lap. "Some papers. I was going to request some time off." Olivia manages a faint smile. "Looks like I got it, huh?"

"Time off," Elliot repeats, enormously relieved to have this mystery explained. "You really felt the need to apologize for that?"

"Yes. I was going to leave you in the middle of an investigation…."

"It's always the middle of an investigation," he points out, but she's no longer listening. Olivia taps the cover of her magazine, then turns to him with the open-mouthed lightbulb expression he knows so well.

"The wife," she says breathlessly. "Samantha's mother."

As their eyes lock he knows she's hit it.

"Ten bucks says she didn't commit suicide," Olivia says, and in the spark in her eyes is her forgiveness.

Elliot gets up, his mind buzzing with implications and pleasant images of squashing that little girl's father like a bug. "I never bet against a sure thing," he says, finding a grin before he leaves to show her he understands.

* * *

One member short and galvanized, the squad takes less than thirty-six hours to prove that Fred Radmar killed his wife and to tie him to Olivia's attack. Munch shakes his head over the perp. "So close to getting away with it."

"Once you figure out the perfect crime," Cragen tells him, "let me know."

Meanwhile Elliot has to be kept from punching Radmar's lights out and Fin clears out at the first opportunity.

* * *

After several tries at the buzzer yield no answer, he slips into the building behind a neighbor, jogs up the stairs, and pounds on Olivia's door until he hears movement inside. Absurd relief washes over him as he listens to her muttering, "Not that I'm not glad you're working so hard, but when your partner's nearly been killed a little more communication might be…"

She trails off. The chain rattles and she flings the door wide. "Oh. It's you."

Fin shuffles his feet. "Can I, uh, come in?"

"Last time I checked, you were mad at me, not the other way around." She leads him into her kitchen and pulls down glasses. "How's your face?"

Absently he rubs his jaw, which is bruised and tender. "Think I'll live."

"Sorry Elliot did that. He's been stupider than usual lately." Olivia is surveying the contents of her fridge doubtfully. "I can offer you …water? Oh, right, all the open bottles went to the lab."

"I think I figured out why he hit me."

Olivia glances at him sharply. "I'm fine, Fin. Really."

"Then why'd he do it?"

"Because… he thought I wasn't fine." She hands him a glass of water and frowns. "I don't have ice."

"Don' matter."

"Fin, I'm sorry." She's not talking about the ice anymore, or even his face, and he knows it.

"Not your fault."

"Well, it's not yours either."

"Your partner's an ass."

"Always."

A lesser woman would point out that _his_ partner is a murderer, but he's dealing with Olivia. Fin hunches over his glass. "Sorry to be leavin' you."

She gives him a soft smile. "I once told Elliot that when you can't trust your partner, it's time to get a new one. Same goes for all of us, I guess. For what it's worth, I obviously think he's trustworthy…but it's not my opinion that matters."

"I can't work with someone who don' trust _me._"

Olivia tips her head, considering him. "You wanna know what I think?"

"Why would I want that?"

"I think Elliot's still mad at you over what happened at Sealview."

Just what he needs: an ironclad reason not to trust himself.

"Which is of course ridiculous," she continues, matter-of-fact, "but he's not known for logic when it comes to me, is he?"

"Sorry," Fin mutters, nearly inaudible.

"That also wasn't your fault. Enough apologizing, okay?" She sips her own water. "You and he might've been fine eventually. But again, my opinion doesn't count." The door buzzes and she leaves him to consider this.

For a minute Fin sits there at her kitchen table, trying to untangle the chain of faults and inevitabilities that led them to this point; but he can't so he wanders after her. "Join the party," she's saying into the speaker, and she grimaces at him, letting go of the button. "This could get awkward."

"Stabler's coming up?" At her nod he feels his body shift, poised to react. Elliot Stabler. Fight or flight. "I should go."

"But you haven't told me about the case yet…"

"Liv."

She hugs him then, tight enough to cut off his surprise at such affection. "Fine," she mutters. "Be that way."

Fin squeezes her briefly around the shoulders. "I will, baby."

"We'll miss you."

"Who's we?"

"The whole damn unit, Fin."

* * *

Predictably, Elliot's first words are, "What'd he want?"

"None of your business. What do _you _want?"

She regrets this instantly, the tone was uncalled for, but he seems to have been expecting it. "To, uh, to apologize."

"Not you too," she groans.

"Huh?"

Olivia crosses her arms. "Actually, it depends what you're apologizing for. If it's for not calling to see if I got out of the damn hospital, then okay."

"Your doctor called me when you checked out."

"That's allowed?"

"I asked her to."

"And I repeat, that's allowed?"

"Do I look like I care?"

Point. At least he didn't forget about her. "Okay. So." She leads him into the kitchen. "If you're not apologizing for what you actually did wrong, then you're apologizing for…"

"Again. For doubting you."

"Oh." She uses the act of sitting down as an excuse to think about this. "We're good."

"Really?"

She's been replaying the scene ever since it happened: Elliot with her note, the open desperation in his eyes when he told her he hadn't believed it. "Really. Water?" She jumps up, restless.

"I just, I worry about you sometimes, Liv."

Olivia freezes with a hand on the faucet, clutching a glass. She doesn't want to hear that. He worries, that's fine, it means he gives a damn and sometimes he's the only one who does. But that's supposed to be the unspoken bit.

She glances over her shoulder and he's shrugging, grinning at her, _what can I do._ Olivia presses her lips together and turns away to hide a smile. God, he's too good to her sometimes. "Sorry I don't have soda or anything," she says, filling the glass, "but _someone_ cleaned out my fridge."

"I didn't send your liquor cabinet."

"Uh, yeah, that's because there is no liquor cabinet." She sits across from him and slides over the water glass.

He pushes it back. "Really."

"Poured it down the drain, oh, about the time Cooper shot herself."

"Down the drain."

"Yeah. I gave the good stuff to the guy downstairs."

"Why?"

Deliberate misunderstanding. "Because he's raising one hell of a hyperactive kid; he's gotta need a stiff drink once in a while."

"Liv. Why?"

She meets his eyes. He wants the truth, he's got it. "Because I could tell my bad luck was gonna keep coming. And because the last thing I need is to get in over my head."

"You still drink."

"Yes. And you know that because…"

Elliot looks at her blankly and she sniggers. She loves when the guys are so dense. "Because I only drink with you, genius."

His eyes widen. "Okay. Next time you give me such a heavy responsibility, would you mind letting me in on the secret?"

"Maybe. It works, anyway."

"Women," he grumbles, then starts as she pats his hand.

"You're learning. Slowly. You've been married how long again?"

"Shut up." Elliot reaches for the water glass between them and rolls it between his palms. "Anyway, I just came to make sure you're all right."

"Of course I am."

"Well."

What a loaded word. Olivia leans back to survey him. He's a good man. He's a rat bastard. It occurs to her that he wants to watch out for her but doesn't always know how. He can be cute like that.

"Well," she repeats. She wants to tell him that she's fine as long as he's around, that his giving a shit goes a long way towards her being okay, but the concept can't seem to make its way from her heart to her brain and he doesn't need to hear it anyway. "Next time just call, but do it earlier, okay?"

"Let's not have a next time. I mean, I'm used to late night phone calls, but that was a whole new level of instant alertness."

"Sorry."

He shrugs and tosses her a folder. "Freddy. Check it out. We figure he thought Samantha told you too much."

"Did you prove abuse?"

"Not yet, but he's not exactly keeping custody." She can feel his eyes on her as she flips through the stack of papers. "Know when you're coming back, Liv?"

"Week, maybe. Think you can manage that long?"

"Just. I need that back."

She waves him off. "You just gave it to me. Go raid the fridge or something. Oh wait – "

"I already did," he supplies, and she laughs because it's been too long since any of them laughed and because after everything they can still finish each other's sentences.

"Yeah," she says, ducking her head to hide the smile, again, because he doesn't need to see it to hear it in her voice. "That's right. You did."

* * *

_-finis-_

_

* * *

Pleasepleaseplease tell me what you thought. Thanks for reading all the way through!_


End file.
